Spider Riders: Book One: Shards of the Oracle [Paperback]

Tedd Anasti (Author), Patsy Cameron-Anasti (Author), Stephen D. Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Series: Spider Riders | Publication Date: December 22, 2004

The basis for an action adventure animé television series to launch in 2005—the first of five novels introducing the world of Arachnia, for 9-12-year-olds—this is the story of a boy and his spider. Only this spider happens to be ten feet tall.

When thirteen-year-old Hunter Steele chases a spider into a mysterious cave, he ends up falling straight down to the center of the Earth, into the fantastic subterranean world of Arachnia. Here, he discovers a small band of elite warriors struggling to survive and to save Arachnia from the attack of giant insect mutants. The warriors are kids, just like Hunter, each fighting with the help of their own three-ton, ten-foot battle spiders. They call themselves "Spider Riders."

In Shards of the Oracle, Hunter arrives in Arachnia just as a magical stone tablet known as the Oracle has been stolen and smashed into eight pieces, each hidden in a hostile location. Hunter wants to help, but first he must capture, train, and learn to trust the spider who will be his partner, a colossal Wanderer Spider, he names Shadow. Together, Hunter, Shadow, and the other Spider Riders battle to recover the Oracle and restore its power.

Shards of the Oracle (Spider Riders: Book One) is the basis for the first season of a 30-minute children's action adventure animé television series currently in production and scheduled to launch in 2005. Spider Riders is destined to become as popular for older kids as Yu-Gi-Oh! and its predecessors Pokémon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 8-page color insert.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-6–Thirteen-year-old Hunter Steele, who suffers from severe arachnophobia, is shocked when he accidentally falls through a tunnel to the center of the Earth and finds himself in Arachnia, a world filled with intelligent, 10-foot-long spiders. The humans who reside there live in peace with them and ride on their backs into battle against the sinister Insectors. Hunter's only hope of returning home is to become one of these Spider Riders. He quickly–and unbelievably–conquers his terror when the plot demands it and, again unbelievably, thinks of a clever plan to save the Spider Riders within a few hours of arriving. The spider he rides talks exactly the way one would expect a smart-mouthed cartoon sidekick to speak. This is a shallow, pedestrian, by-the-numbers adventure, but it is also the novelization of an animated TV series scheduled to launch before the end of this year. –Walter Minkel, New York Public Library
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About the Author

Patsy Cameron & Tedd Anasti have written and produced over 500 half-hour episodes of such children's TV hits as Disney's Timon and Pumbaa, Duck Tales, and The Little Mermaid; the Free Willy TV series and the Emmy Award-winning Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. Married with two children, they were inspired by their son's passion for spiders to write Spider Riders.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 15 and up
  
• Paperback: 213 pages
• Publisher: Newmarket Press (December 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557046522
• ISBN-13: 978-1557046529
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,266,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Spider movies, June 8, 2007

By 

Edyth L. Mcnair - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spider Riders: Book One: Shards of the Oracle (Paperback)

This book leaves those movies about mindless man-eating spiders in the dust!